Writing Departments

Writing Departments

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Bethalynne is a Michigan native who spent much of her early life chasing the fae around her grandfather's nearly mythical fairy tale garden. Where the fae weren't calling, the strange shadows in the closet were whispering. When it was finally suggested that she kindly bring herself down from the clouds (and out from those dark places) she turned her expansive imagination towards capturing her characters and their worlds through writing and drawing. The latter has led to her having a notable career as a professional artist for the past twenty years.

Throughout those years the stories behind the artwork has been slowly increasing to numerous short stories, essays, anthologies, novels, and even serial fiction. Ver Sacrum Books (in a nod to the era and art movement that has inspired Bethalynne the most) was established as a library to offer these wonderful tales to the world in the same fashion as the art that was inspired by them.

To see Bethalynne's full portfolio of creative works please take a moment to visit her website Bajema's Web.

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Bits & Bobs

On this day in 28 BC one of the earliest observations of a sunspot was seen by the Han dynasty astronomers in China. In 1869 the first Transcontinental Railroad is completed linking the east to the west in the United States. And in 1908 the very first Mother’s Day is observed in the US in Grafton, West Virginia. Sidney Blower knows very little about these dates and their recorded events, but she does know a thing or two about the sun. You see, on May 10th in 1913 Ms Blower catches the sun and successfully brews it into her new tea.

The idea came to Sidney one night as she sat with her mother and father on the porch of their country home. The sun was starting to set in the distance and it took with it the last of the light her aging parents could see by. No matter how many candles she lit or how she tried to lighten up their home for those dark hours, her parents would see nothing but shadows and this distressed her so. As she watched that sun she wondered to herself if she could capture just a little of it and gift it to her parents so they had a small light in that darkness.

Sidney’s first few attempts were haphazard events that she didn’t like to think about. A sunburn came from one and a sun itch (something she would tell people you had to experience because no words could properly describe the sensation) came from the other. She knew she was onto something though. She just needed to find the right medium to work with.

There came a moment, as Sidney gently led her parents to the dinner table, where her mother reminded her to bring in their sun-tea. The young woman walked back to the porch and picked up the large jar of amber colored water that had been left with a light weave of material filled with loose tea leafs to cure in the sun. Sidney looked at that beautiful thing of tea and knew she could somehow get the sun into that jar better than just using its warmth to brew her tea.

“A strange thing we saw the day we crept into the old man’s room. All of the eerie taxidermy creatures had been removed from the shelves and the wall. Not one pair of mammal eyes watched us. In their place a glutton of smaller eyes, many of them fractured and alien to us.

“The walls were covered with insects given the taxidermist’s treatment. Their bodies were frozen in time and preserved; but beyond that decorated. The mystery of Nanna’s missing jewelry was revealed to us and solved in this vision. Chains and rings, the old woman’s gems and the guts of the woman’s old watches, all broken down and used to decorate the little insect bodies. The old man had made a shrine to the insect and its breed that had taken his wife’s life from him.

“The sting that had killed her was somehow perverted and beautified in equal measure within this overwhelming collection.” From Sepia.

One can only guess as to how these stories come to be or how they seem to spread so far. I can remember a time so long ago where communication was only through letters, telegrams and word of mouth and yet? These stories were already there circulating through the aether everywhere. Tales about secret places and the creatures that inhabit them.

My favorites of these stories have always been the tales of the Taureans and the Saturnines. A Taurean was born when a person couldn’t control their own desire to know something, especially something considered forbidden. They read a book that wasn’t meant for their eyes or they forced the darkness to tell them a secret they were never meant to hear. In both cases doing so after being warned not to. The result was a creature born of what that person was and what that desire turned them into. A Saturnine to me is worse because they’re a creature born of an innocent person and a curse.

One such story floating through aether is about and Saturnine and a secret place. Secret places are between the reality of the everyday and that which lies beyond the dusk-lands. This story involved the Secret Calcutta, or to be more precise, just outside the gates of this hidden place.

Nanannie Noot was once a night spirit who could be seen moving under the crescent moon in the far west. She kept two gecko companions, Nut and Norman, and her best friend a zebroid named Nanook. Together they passed quietly through the night looking for travelers caught out in the cruelly cold desert night. Those who have met her in such times say she offered them one of the elegant bottles she carried with her and softly told them to drink the night and the night would look after them. With one sip the cold became warm, the lonely became content and the fearful were able to laugh. It was often only rumored that from the same bottle if a cruel person sipped the wrathful became subservient, the lust-filled became subdued and the murderer forever saw the night and was haunted by the unnamed shadows that would torment them.

It was said that one night she found the crescent moon to not be shining so she reached up into the heavens to offer it a drink. Soon it shined brighter in the sky than ever it had and Nanannie Noot and her small caravan were swept up into the night sky where the night spirit became the goddess behind the moon. From An Autumn with Isidore.

Friday the 13th: Coventina’s mysterious and magical dark water cabaret performs tonight. To see this performance simply take a right at the bridge and dive in. When you see the sea horse give him the password, any password. Your tickets are not needed here, only your imagination. From An Autumn with Isidore.

Seaweed Starwart found herself spending more and more time lounging in the fallen leaves she was supposed to be raking up and staring at the fence surrounding the house across the street. Every so often a man would come walking down the sidewalk and as he grew nearer to the fence his eyes would become dreamy, his movements would become relaxed and ever so slowly he would let himself drift towards the fence. Once there he’d happily stand looking over the fence at something Seaweed couldn’t see until the lady of the house came rushing from the front door and shooed the man away.

Lazily Seaweed got up from her comfortable leaf nest and found that her curiosity was getting the better of her. She checked to make sure no one was watching and she slipped over to the fence. As she stood up on her tippy-toes and peered over the fence she saw the most incredible sight: Three little sirens in the bird bath singing their tiny little siren songs to whatever man happened to walk by. From An Autumn with Isidore.

Peppermint’s summers were long and full of green lawns and laughing friends, but she often longed for the moodiness of autumn to come back. To have those cool days where she could wrap herself in warm clothes and sit with a cup of warm cider as she read. Her surly little bat-cat, the one eared Hunter Bear, would lay at her feet and purr with the type of contentment only a feline seemed to know. She had performed this scene so many times through her young life that she had thoroughly worked her way through the old classics, the new classics, and all those scandalous Henry Miller and Anais Nin books her mother kept at the top of the tallest book shelf in the house. And then she met Clive. As a new autumn spread out before her and the smell of burning wood filled the night air, Peppermint let her mind garden grow in new and fascinating ways with the types of seeds only this author could plant there. (This is part of a Halloween series of short stories. You can see the full online feature/collection here.)

Sometimes it was hard for the Sisters Hollow to keep their true identities to themselves. It was all a game of misdirection and changing of the subject. It can never be said that their true identities coming to light was bad for business though. It was one thing to go to a seance performed by the Fox sisters and listen for their echoing knuckle or ankle cracks as one of them proclaimed a spirit was a foot! It was a completely different thing to go to a seance held by the Sisters Hollow and watch one of them accidentally sneeze ectoplasm before the show even began. From An Autumn with Isidore.